During the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, several waves of a plague killed an estimated one-third of the civilian Athenian population and one-fourth of its army. Thucydides account of the plague (430-426 BCE) and the subsequent rise of the cult of Asclepius can be examined as perhaps the earliest case study of collective behavior and a social movement. In his account of the plague...

Platforms like Reddit have attracted large and vibrant communities, but the individuals in those communities are free to migrate to other platforms at any time. History has borne this out with the mass migration from Slashdot to Digg. The underlying motivations of individuals who migrate between platforms, and the conditions that favor migration online are not well-understood. We examine Reddit...

The theme of current year studio Design As Politics made me to think of the planning processes in a wider sense, including not only the social and spatial aspect, but also the political perspective, and how it relates to influencing physical form of the city. I got interested to look into such processes more deeply, from a professional perspective, to analyze the methods, strategies and consequ...

Inequalities in society, culture, and finance have resulted in civil unrest, rioting, and intentional violence throughout our history. Nowhere is this currently more apparent than in the cities of Ferguson and Baltimore. It is not the civil unrest itself, but the resulting rioting and intentional violence that can create a disaster situation. This increases the care burden of health care provid...

Autonomic dysregulation in patients suffering from major depression is expressed in cardiovascular regulation as well as in the pupillary light reflex. We used spectral analysis and unrest indices to uncover indications of autonomic imbalance in resting pupillographic recordings. Significantly increased unrest and mean pupil diameters were observed in depressed patients. Pupillometric parameter...

Taxation may trigger social unrest, as highlighted by historical examples. At the same time, tax income could boost state capacity which may, in turn, foster political stability. Understanding a priori ambiguous taxation-turmoil nexus is particularly relevant for low-income countries today – yet causal evidence on topic very scarce. Using regression discontinuity design, we exploit unique polic...

Many examples attest to the dramatic extent of inequality within and between countries. In 2000 the richest country in the world (Luxembourg) enjoyed a per capita gross national income level more than 90 times that of the poorest (Sierra Leone). In 1998 the average consumption levels of the richest 10% of Zambians were 37 times those of the poorest 10%. In India in 1990, 56% of those aged 15 ye...